Newsletter-252-March-1992

NEWSLETTER 252 Edited by Liz Sagues MARCH 1992

Diary

Tuesday, March 3 Ancient
Monuments — Their Care and Preservation

by Helen Paterson, AIFA (HADAS lecture)

Miss Paterson has been Field Monuments Warden for
English Heritage since December 1978. She will show slides of ancient monuments
in the Greater London area, Hertfordshire and possibly Essex and will talk
about the whole legal position and the problems to be overcome with ploughing
and redevelopment.

Saturday, March 21 29th
Annual Conference of London Archaeologists,

at the Museum of London, 11am - 5.30pm The theme is
Recent Archaeological Work in the London Area and the talks cover excavations
at Upminster, Tolworth and Old Malden, Cheapside, Long Acre and Bull Wharf. The
afternoon session is entitled Cess Flies and What They Are ... There will be
the usual displays of recent work undertaken by local societies, HADAS
included. For tickets (£3 for LAMAS members, £4 for non-members, including
afternoon tea) apply to LAMAS, c/o Museum of London, London Wall, London EC2Y
5HN.

Tuesday, April 7 Archaeology
and History of Sutton House, Hackney

by Mike Gray. (HADAS lecture)

Tuesday, May 5 HADAS
Annual General Meeting

Saturday
May 16 Our first outing of 1992 is a follow-up
to the April 7 lecture ­a visit to Sutton House and then on to Waltham Abbey with
Peter Huggins, Waltham Abbey Archaeological Society

Saturday, June 20 Outing
to Loughborough, Rushton and Geddington

Saturday
July 11 Outing to Witney to the recent excavation
by Oxford Archaeological Unit (see article on page 6)

August
28,29,30 Weekend in Dorset — to be confirmed.
Please see separate enclosure with this Newsletter

Tuesday, October 6 The
Roman Pottery Manufacturing Site in Highgate Woods

by Harvey Sheldon (HADAS lecture)

Saturday, October 3 or 10 Minimart

Tuesday
November, 3 Excavating
in Northern Iraq — from the Greeks to the Mongols by Dr John Curtis (HADAS
lecture)

Tuesday, December 1 or 8 Christmas
Dinner

HADAS lectures are held at Hendon Library, The
Burroughs, at 8pm for 8.30pm.

Dorothy Newbury writes: As you will see the above dates
are not all confirmed yet. It is hoped a complete programme card will accompany
this Newsletter. It has been suggested that we have a small Mini-Minimart one
Saturday in the spring, morning only, with coffee, to dispose of the vast
amount of summer wear which we can never sell in October and also the
accumulation of other goods we already have to hand.

The items "wanted and for sale" on the slip
issued monthly are most welcome. Please continue to send in your sales and
wants. Although we don't sell everything, it is very lucrative and goes a long
way towards boosting our takings at the annual Minimart.

Pamela Taylor provides some
answers to:

The question of Temple
Fortune

I hope the following note will answer Ann Kahn's query
concerning Temple Fortune, although the early history of the area still has to
be disentangled and no attempt has yet succeeded.

The Place-Names of Middlesex (1942), p.59, gives the
earliest reference as Rocque's map of 1754 and derives "Temple" from
the Templars, who held land within Hendon in 1243. This is almost certainly the
correct derivation, but a linking reference which it makes to The Temples in
the 1574 Hendon Manor survey is largely irrelevant. The survey makes it plain
that The Temples lay on the southern bound­ary, west of Hodford Wood corner,
and it must therefore be the adjacent former Templar estate within Hampstead.

The Victoria County History of Middlesex (vol.5, 1976,
p.21) almost certainly confuses the history of the Temple Fortune estate with
that of a later Templar acquisition in west Hendon, which became part of their
Kingsbury manor of Freren (for which see the same volume, p.60). It was the
estate including Temple Fortune which was given to the Templars in 1243. Like
most of the Templar property, it seems to have passed at their suppression to
the Hospitallers. The history after the Dissolution is obscure: part (the
Wyldes estate) passed to Eton College in the 16th century, but the Finchley
part (known as Temple Croft, and including the site of Avenue House) re­mained
in private hands. There is a detailed account of the Finchley descent in VCH vol.6,
1980, p.60.

The Place-Names of Middlesex says the mean­ing of
"Fortune" is not clear, but cross-refers to

Ann Kahn writes: I am most grateful to John Enderby,
George Ingram and Jean Snelling who have replied to my query on the origins of
Temple Fortune. Other members may also be interested in the results I have had
so far. I have had no definite explanation yet, but there seems to be a
connection with the Knights Templar who may have had a staging post in the
area. Templars and Temple are fairly common elements in street names in
Finchley Church End and Temple Fortune. Fortune Gate in Willesden, which may be
foran-tune that is in front of the tun of Harlesden. There is no archaeological
or other actual evidence concerning early settlement of Temple Fortune, but it
seems on more nebulous grounds by far the most likely loca­tion for the centre
of Bleccanham, the Westminster estate separately acquired by the abbey in the
10th century (and it may even have belonged previously to the small earlier
foundation) but soon amalga­mated with Hendon. We know that Bleccanham was the
area south of the Brent, and it must have had an estate centre. All our early
settlements are on high or rising land, and south of the Brent the only hills
are at Temple For­tune and Childs Hill. The latter is almost certainly the
centre of another estate, Codanhlaw, appearing separately in the early Westminster
charters.

Another indicator comes from the routes of early
roads. The importance of the road junction at

Temple Fortune, long before the creation of the Finchley
Road, is still obvious on maps such as Cooke (1796). This was the junction of
the route from Hendon via Mutton Bridge and the old route from Finchley later
replaced by the Finchley Road. The route southwards already terminated
abruptly, as Wild Hatch still does, but this was obviously a later development,
which has been well charted by stu­dents of Wyldes and Hampstead.

It is at least possible that the "Fortune" part
of Temple Fortune commemorates Bleccanham, which became the tun in front of the
tun of Hendon. Ar­chaeological help would be highly welcome!

Ekwall's Concise Oxford Dictionary of English
Placenames (4th edition) ignores Temple Fortune, but gives Forton, Lancs, and
Forton, Shropshire, as "For­tune" in D.B. (Domesday Book), and includes
Fortun, Staffordshire, as "tun by a ford". This seems to tie up with
the information received that the line of the Finchley Road was further west,
nearer Bridge Lane. It may be that there was a ford there and this is the
origin of the second part of the name.

In brief ...

Wembley History Society is celebrating is 40th
anniversary with a talk 1952-1992, The Years In Be­tween, on March 20 at its
usual venue, Old St Andrew's Church, Kingsbury, from 7.30pm to 9pm.

The annual excavation training school organ­ised by
Keele University will be continuing in its eighth season on a Roman villa site
in Gloucester­shire, in two-week sessions in June, July and August. Beginners
or diggers with some experience can at­tend for any or all of the six weeks,
and training in all aspects of archaeology will be provided during all the
weeks. Tuition fee is £65 a week. For application forms, which should be
returned as soon as possible, contact Liz Holliday, 081-204 4616.

Bill Bass sends

A despatch from the trenches

St Mary's School, Finchley Central: Following an
evaluation dig in January 1991, the Museum of Lon­don has returned for a
full-scale excavation, which started on February 3 and is intended to last six
weeks. The main body of the Victorian building has been demolished and is being
cleared by contractors. Staff from the MoL and the Passmore Edwards Mu­seum are
cleaning the underlying layers by hand. In the original evaluation finds
included hearths, slot beams, post holes, pits and a ditch, with large amounts
of associated pottery. The pottery was varied: grey wares, sandy shelly wares
and some splashed glazed wares. Most dates to around 1150­1250 AD, with some
possibly late Saxon.

The new dig has already recovered a large rim sherd,
evidence of plough soil and some very clear post holes. The MoL has invited
HADAS to participate and arrangements are being made for Sunday and week-day
digging. If members are interested in this or any other dig, please contact
Brian Wrigley, Andy Simpson, Arthur Till or myself (081-449 0165).

News from previous digs: In February 1982 HADAS
organised a rescue dig at the Old Bull Arts

Centre, this site being close to the medieval heart of
Barnet. Most evidence was Victorian, but some sherds of medieval pottery were
recovered.

The Old Bull now has permission for an exten­sion
which will house a visual arts gallery and pro-

vide access for people with disabilities, including a
lift and staircase at the back. Limited observation of the trench for the lift
foundation did not reveal any further finds or features. Site watching will
continue as building progresses.

In 1990 the society conducted an excavation at 19-25
High Street, Barnet (Newsletter 237). This yielded a large quantity of medieval
pottery sherds associ­ated with a pebble yard feature, also post-medieval wall
footing, pits and pottery. The site is now being developed into a three-storey
office/shop building, which involves the demolition of Guyscliffe House (former
Barnet College extension) and 1, 3 and 5 Fitzjohn Avenue, which is now taking
place. Hope­fully some form of site-watching will continue.

New sites: Other sites on which HADAS Exca­vation
Committee members have their eyes include the former Victoria Maternity
Hospital, Barnet (be­ing developed into "posh" offices), and Old Fold
Manor Golf Club and Two Brewers pub, Hadley, both on the site of the Battle of
Barnet. The Two Brewers is apparently to be demolished following a fire. In
Edgware, at Edgwarebu ry Park (near Brockley Hill) HADAS has been asked to
conduct some field walking and excavation. This is now being organ­ised.

Weight training for diggers: For the last 20 years or
so eight (heavy) boxes of Brockley Hill Roman pottery have lain in the depths
of the Hampstead Garden Suburb Institute. Recently we were asked to remove
them, to free the space. So on February 5 a team from HADAS Removals Ltd, with
the whip cracked by John Enderby, shifted the boxes to our storage room at
College Farm, Finchley. Thanks to the Institute for looking after the material
over the years.

A section dug as footings by the builders was examined
and photographed and a trench two metres by one was dug on lower ground to
check whether the soil profile was similar. It was not — unfortunately this
section showed a truncated subsoil on to which topsoil had been placed. There
was very little evidence of soil weathering and no iron pan development.

Conclusion: between one and two feet of topsoil had
been placed on a truncated subsoil (Claygate Beds). This, as walking and
earlier examination had shown, was very disturbed by various gardening and
construc­tion activities. Thus the many miscellaneous finds were all assumed to
be derived.

The southern boundary area from which most of the
flint flakes had come was re-examined, but appeared as disturbed as the rest of
the area (or even more dis­turbed) and not worthy of further attention.

Finds, inventory and photos are to be stored at Avenue
House.

Margaret Maher writes:

Seven members met at short notice at 9am on February 6
to inspect the site of 61 West Heath Drive, Hampstead, which is to be
redeveloped. We had permission to investigate the rear part of the two-acre
sloping site, in an area of the garden which appeared to have been unaffected
by previous building activity.

The next four-and-a-half hours were spent walk­ing
over the ground and loosening the smeared (ma­chine cleared) topsoil in a
search for finds. A few modern and Victorian potsherds were recovered, a clay
pipe stem and two rusted metal objects so corroded as to be unidentifiable. The
most interesting fragments came from a white glazed earthenware milk jar.
Unfortu­nately, the name of the company was missing.

From the bottom (literally) of the garden at the far
end of the site just by the boundary fence a number of small flint flakes were
recovered. Probably Mesolithic, they were of considerable interest because of
the prox­imity of the West Heath site, some 600 metres to the NE. Peter
Pickering reports on the first lecture of 1992

An underground feast

The first event of 1992 had a similar structure to the
last event of 1991. It had three courses. The first, or appetiser course, took
the form of a few absolutely superb pictures of cave paintings from Lascaux.
The third, or dessert course, was to some tastes macabre — the catacombs of
Paris, ossuaries with the bones arranged in decorative patterns on the walls.

But it was the entrée on which Sylvia Beaumon had
lavished all her culinary skills, and it was a feast indeed, which few of us
could have anticipated when we arrived that mild winter evening in Hendon
Library.

Maastricht is well known now to all who follow current
affairs with any interest. But very few will have known that nearby are miles
and miles of underground passages, disused mines, wherein for 400 years people
have been drawing, painting and sculpting on the walls.

They have used different mediums, with differ­ing
degrees of professionalism, and of course have depicted a wide range of
subjects. Many relate to wars — a picture of Napoleon, a list of families who
suffered in the Second World War; many were religious in inspiration, for the
passages had been used by trainee Jesuits for their periods of recreation;
there were advertisements for margarine; and fan­tasy landscapes of the time
when dinosaurs roamed the earth. It was, literally, amazing.

We cannot have been alone in finding the talk provoked
more conversation and reminiscence than many of the more academic lectures we
have heard. What we had seen underground, when and where. What was the
fascination that surrounded the sub­terranean? Whether this was the true
"pop art".

Thank you, HADAS, for the capacity always to surprise.

Roy Walker links books to
talk

Art on the library shelves

Though books relating specifically to the February lec­ture
on subterranean art are few, the HADAS collection does contain a number of
works on prehistoric art. These are:

Cave Drawings: An Exhibition of Drawings by the Abbe
Breuil of Palaeolithic Paintings and Engravings (Arts Council, 1954),

Secrets of the Ice Age: The World of the Cave Artists (E.
Hadingham, 1979).

And the rest of the list:

Nearly 200 new accessions have been catalogued since
the Avenue House fire, including several books from the Barnet Library reserve
collection kindly do­nated by the borough. Of local and society interest are
the following:

Finchley's Countryside: A Glimpse into its Past and
Threats to its Future (O. Natelson),

Industrial Monuments in Hertfordshire (W. Branch
Johnson),

Statutory List of Buildings of Special Architectural
or Historic Interest (London Borough of Barnet),

If you are interested in borro wing any of the above
or would like access to the room at Avenue House to browse through the library,
then please telephone 081­361 1350 or make contact at the next HADAS meeting.

Nothing new in nefarious
habits

So there's nothing new in thieves' habits, according
to a report last month in the Daily Telegraph.

The report describes how archaeologists in York were
puzzled by the number of empty 13th century purses they found on a site in the
city. But medieval purses were not the only finds. Each Monday, when they
returned to the site, they discovered more empty purses and wallets — 20th
century ones.

Just as the modern thieves tossed their un­wanted
booty away in a quiet alleyway, so did their counterparts 700 years earlier,
the archaeologists concluded.

"It seems quite a nice example of behavior which
hasn't changed," Nick Pearson, senior field officer with the York
Archaeological Trust, is re­ported as saying.

Not a magical experience

Liz Sagues follows the argument against a long-held
theory

The long-contentious "cave art was hunting
magic" theory surfaced briefly during the February lecture. For members
who'd like to know the latest state of argument, Paul Bahn summarises it
cogently — and comes down firmly against a major hunting symbolism in the art
of the palaeo­lithic hunters — in Rock Art and Pre­history.

This monograph, edited by Balm and Andrée Rosenfeld,
comprises pa­pers presented to the first congress of the Australian Rock Art
Research Association, held in Darwin in au­tumn 1988.

De-mythifying the Montespan bear: Cartoon by Laurent, one of the illustrations in Paul Bahn's paper in Rock Art and prehistory, where it is reproduced by kind permission of Pierre Fanlac.

Bahn uses the example of the bear at Montespan
("the bear facts" is one of his sub-headings) to per­suade readers
that hunting magic is in the mind of the interpreters, not the originators, of
the art. Hunting, he argues, may well have played a role in the production of
some palaeolithic art, in some functional or more mystical way, "but it is
clearly not a dominant feature". His words are entertaining, his thesis
convincing.

As might be expected, the main emphasis of the volume
is on Australian prehistoric art. But there is plenty, too, to interest anyone
with a general enthu­siasm for the subject. Ireland and Indonesia, for example,
are among other locations of prehistoric art which are considered, while female
artists, "the un­recognised factor in sacred rock art production",
are the subject of another paper. The bibliographies, also, are invaluable for
anyone who wants to take the subject further. One warning, though: you'll find
that not all the contributions share the lightness of touch of Bahn's.

Rock Art and Prehistory is the tenth in a series of
archaeological mongraphs published by Oxbow Books, whose Oxford headquarters
are a treasure-house of archaeological publications. Other subjects in the
series range from The Early Roman Empire in the West to the The Trireme Trials
1988, from Amber in Prehistoric Britain to Anatolian Iron Ages. Prices vary;
Rock Art and Prehistory is £15.

Any member visiting Oxford could happily spend hours
browsing through Oxbow's shelves, which contain a huge variety of in-print
archaeologi­cal titles, remaindered ones hard to find elsewhere (Bahn and
Vertut's Images of the Ice Age, £15, is among them), obscure monographs
including a good number published overseas, bargain books and sec­ond-hand
volumes.

And if you can't get to Oxford, or can't face the
lengthy climb up to the bookshop, everything is available by post: write to
Oxbow Books, Park End Place, Oxford OX1 1HN (0865 241249) for a list. Postal
charges are 10 per cent of order value, up to a maximum of £2.50, and you can
pay by cheque or credit card.

If you are going in person, Oxbow is very close to
Oxford station and is open all day Monday to Friday and on Saturday morning. A
recommended stopping-point for HADAS members.

Contributions wanted!

The schedule for Newsletter editors for the remainder
of 1992 has been published

This list includes one new editor and one returned
after a lapse of four years. We have no reserve editor — there must be someone
out there who could stand in in an emergency, so please volunteer.

Will ALL members please send in any news or reports,
local or otherwise, to the editor of the relevant month's Newsletter by the due
date. Life would be made much easier for the editors if they didn't have to
ring around.

The society's thanks must go to all 12 editors for
keeping the Newsletter going. It is much appreciated by all our members and is
an important factor in keeping up our membership numbers to around 360. Thanks
are due also to Alan Lawson, who delivers some 30 Newsletters in Hampstead Garden
Suburb every month, thus saving the society about £60 a year.

Ted Sammes reports on

A sad event, a happy occasion

In an upstairs room of the City Pride pub in
Farringdon Road, Clerkenwell, on the evening of February 12 there gathered a
cross-section of every­one engaged in the archaeology of Greater London in one
form or another.

The room was packed almost to capacity, though not
quite to the extent of drinking out of your neigh­bour's glass! There must have
been more than 100 people assembled there to wish Harvey Sheldon all the best
for the future.

As mentioned in last month's Newsletter, Harvey led
the first team of full-time professional archaeologists in London from 1970,
becoming the Museum of London's Archaeology Officer and later, in 1983, head of
its Department of Greater London Archaeology.

Appropriately, the farewell party was held close to
Ray Street, where the processing of archaeological material has taken place for
many years under his guidance.

This was not an "organised do" but a
spontane­ous happening. Among the people present I spotted our own President,
Ralph Merrifield. I don't know if it ran to speeches, but the overall
atmosphere was buoyant and I'm sure very heartening to Harvey.

A hard-hitting commentary on what led up to this event
is provided by Gromaticus in The London Archaeologist, Winter 1991, Vol 6, No
13, page 341. A more general article on Harvey appeared in Current Archaeology,
1991, No 124, page 165.

Under canvas ...

The site of the HADAS July outing is something special
in archaeological terms — but in its modern construc­tion, rather than its
ancient.

English Heritage has built a £300,000
computer-designed, Teflon-coated canopy over the remains of the 12th century fortified
manor built by the Bishops of Winchester at Witney, Oxfordshire, recently
uncovered by Oxford Archaeological Unit in a 10-week rescue dig.

The tent is designed to be maintenance-free and to
last for 25 years, and its anchor points avoid damaging any buried structures.
It covers the massive stone foun­dations of the solar, which retains its
original 12th century exterior rendering and also has the largest Nor­man
lavatories known in England.

The manor survived to the 18th century as a pictur­esque
ruin and final above-ground traces were obliter­ated at the beginning of this
century. The present excavation was in advance of planned redevelopment of the
site as retirement homes, but the outline planning permission for this has been
successfully overturned in favour of preservation of the Norman remains. It
willed open to the public in early summer, with a full-scale interpretative
display, including audio facilities.

papers from the past reveal

The crimes and the sentences

It didn't do, in the 17th century, to disturb the
neigh­bours. Witness the example of Agnes Miller, wife of a Finchley yeoman,
who in January 1616 was sen­tenced "to be duckt in some pond of
water" for being "a notorious and common scoulde and disturber of the
neighbours and honest inhabitants of Finchley and Fryarn Barnett".

Worse was the fate of Elizabeth Rutter, also a
resident of Finchley, who a year earlier had been convicted of bewitching two
sisters and their brother and murdering them by sorcery. A fourth child had
also fallen beneath her spell, and she must hang, the justices decided.

For these and many more accounts of past jus­tice,
Dorothy Newbury is indebted to a friend, John Harley, whose son has carefully
researched, tran­scribed and annotated entries contained in the Calen­dar of
the Sessions Books 1689-1709, published by W.J. Hardy in 1905, and volumes of Middlesex
Sessions Rolls from the reigns of Tudor and Stuart monarchs, edited by J.C.
Jeaffreson and published in the late 19th century.

The entries cover, in the main, happenings in Hendon,
Finchley, Edgware and Hampstead. Ten sheets of Mr Harley junior's work have
been pre­sented to the society.

Tantalisingly, given the interest in witchcraft shown
in recent HADAS Newsletters, information on such cases is limited. The details
of the case of Helen Beriman, of Laleham, who was found not guilty of killing
four calves by "witchcraft, inchantements, charmes and sorceries",
are not de­scribed. And those of Alice Bradley, of Hampstead, acquitted of
committing witchcraft against two heif­ers, four hogs, a six-year-old boy and a
woman, are omitted because of their length.

But there is information on Joan and William Hunt, of
Hampstead, who featured in several witch­craft cases. In January and March 1614
they were cleared of allegations that "at the instigation of the devil
(they) practised and exercised certain impious and diabolic arts, called
witchcraftes, inchantments, charmes and sorceries" on a neighbour. But two
years later Mrs Hunt was convicted of the same offence — this time against a
three-year-old child ­and was sentenced to death.

Mr Harley notes that she was one of only three people
to be hanged for witchcraft in Middlesex during the reign of James I. Six were
acquitted, one dropped dead after pleading not guilty, and one was imprisoned
and forced four times to make public confession in the pillory.

He adds: "Although no English county was ever
seized with a real witch-craze, many parts of the country reached fairly high
levels of persecution during the first half of the 17th century." Essex,
it seems, was particularly enthusiastic in its pursuit of alleged witches,
though "nowhere near" as severe as many continental countries.
Middlesex was "nota­ble for its high acquittal rate".

His researches are full of other intriguing infor­mation
on Tudor and Stuart justice and other legal affairs. There are, for example,
the inn-keepers who protested at the suppression (or cancellation) of their
licences. Edward Clarke, of Hendon, contended that the order closing his
"ill-governed and disorderly house" was obtained by
"surprize", convinced the justices that his was "the most
fitting house in the neighbourhood for the accommodation of travel­lers",
and got his licence back.

Six years after that, in 1697, the head constable and
petty constables obtained an order preventing "the concourse of disorderly
persons at Burrows Green, Hendon, in Whitsun week, assembling there under
pretence of holding a fair".

There were cases of blocked public ways and neglected
bridges, information on the amount of aid outer London parishes were ordered to
pay to inner London counterparts intolerably stretched by the plague, details
of inquests — including one of a nine­year-old servant boy in Hendon, who
stumbled and drowned in a pond while carrying an earthern pot of water — and
domestic assaults.

And crime, of course. Two yeomen, Thomas Turner and
John Church, who broke into a house at Finchley in 1563 and stole pieces of
cloth worth 46 shillings, were sentenced to be hung. So, too, was Richard Fage,
who with his wife Elizabeth robbed a woman on the highway in Edgware in 1569
and stole clothing worth 30 pence. Mrs Fage, who pleaded pregnancy, was allowed
to bear and nurse her child but faced the death penalty two years later.

Less brutal, but still severe, was the sentence meted
out to Alice Arthur, spinster, late of Hendon, convicted of vagrancy in 1572.
She was ordered to "be whipt severely, and burnt on the right ear".

There is much more of interest in the records, and Mr
Harley's sheets can be borrowed before they are deposited in the library.
Contact Dorothy Newbury on 081-203 0950.

Sensible, but short on
discussion

Lithics, the annually-published Newsletter of the
Lithic Studies Society (No 11, 1990), has reviewed the HADAS report on the
first five years of excava­tion at West Heath. Here we summarise the review and
note some of the comments made by Alison Roberts, of the Quaternary Department
of the Brit­ish Museum.

Describing the excavations as "a model of the
type of work that can be achieved by an archaeological society", Alison
Roberts commends the report as "of very good value for the concise details
with which the results are presented". It is also, she says,
"well-balanced and sensible".

But she is less happy with the "lack of
continuity in quality and style of the contributions" and with the failure
to allow space for fully detailed discussion on several topics — the
interpretation of "strike-a-lights", for example, or the refitting
project. On that latter subject, she remarks: "West Heath is one of the
largest and best recorded Mesolithic assemblages in the coun­try, and the
technological and spatial information possi­ble from the analysis of conjoining
artefacts would be of considerable importance."

She congratulates HADAS on the range and vari­ety of
the post-excavation work and concludes: "The volume is packed full of
interesting and useful informa­tion about this large Early Mesolithic site in
North London... However, my major criticism ... is that there was very little
discussion or interpretation of the wealth of information presented. My
appetite has been whet­ted and I look forward to hearing more about this site ­and
especially to the report of the more recent phase of excavations..."

Copies of Excavations at the Mesolithic Site on West
Heath, Hampstead 1976-1981, edited by Desmond Col­lins and Daphne Lorimer, BAR
British Series 217, are available to members at £7, plus £1 postage, from
Victor Jones, 78 Temple Fortune Lane, NW11 7TT.

Opening a shutter on the past

The firm which turned skills acquired in assaying to
good use in the development of photography is the subject of the new exhibition
at Church Farm House Museum — Johnsons of Hendon, Memories of a Major
Photographic and Chemical Company.

The exhibition, which continues until March 22,
explains that the company's expertise with such chemicals as silver nitrate led
to it becoming promi­nent in producing photographic chemicals and equip­ment.
Johnsons acquired a site at Hendon during the First World War, when the
expansion of aerial pho­tography for military purposes greatly accelerated the
photographic chemical side of its work.

The activities of the firm in Hendon — where it was a
major employer — are traced in the display, through its products and through the
memorabilia of those who used to work for it.

Ted Sammes writes: Johnsons' factory stood, until
demolished in the 1970s, roughly where the car park of Brent Cross Shopping
Centre is located to­day. There was also a warehouse in Brent Street, Hendon.
The black and orange of the Johnsons' advertisements and labels became a
familiar "trade mark" to anyone involved in photography.

In an act of mindless commercial vandalism the records
were burnt, and what is on display now has been assembled by Gerrard Roots over
a period of at least two years, by patient contact and inquiry across the
country. I am proud to have played some small part in its collection.

Getting better

Victor Jones, our treasurer, has had a short spell in
hospital and is now home again. We wish him a speedy recovery and hope he will
soon be in circula­tion again.